14 DAY TRIAL // There have been a few laptops and tablets that ran the Android operating system on a hardware configuration centered around an x86 CPU. Usually, these were dual-OS consumer electronics.
Advanced Micro Devices wants to take things further than this. Or at least it is considering the option of designing processors for the Android and Chrome OS operating systems.
AMD Senior Vice President and General Manager of Global Business Units, Lisa Su, revealed as much when talking to PC World.
AMD is already collaborating with developers to make Android applications for AMD chips. We imagine the Temash APU only added fuel to those efforts.
The company wants to actually make chips for the mobile OSes, instead of trying to adapt the operating systems and apps to existing platforms.
Oddly, though, AMD only has so-called special projects in mind, made specifically for each partner. Quite a difference from the normal modus operandi, of mass-producing a chip for everyone to use (like NVIDIA does with the Tegra 4).
Maybe AMD is seeing worth in doing what it did for the Sony PlayStation 4 (used Jaguar cores and Radeon graphics to make a special-purpose platform, instead of handing a company a ready-made APU and telling it to figure the rest out on its own).
If everything goes well, the need for using BlueStacks might disappear (emulator that runs Android apps on Windows PCs).
It will take time of course, but with Windows 8 tablet reception proving so lukewarm, it's not like there are many other paths with potential for marketing success.
No details exist, sadly. In time, these plans will be either confirmed or disavowed and, in the case of the former, AMD's partners should make themselves known one by one, or maybe all at once.
There's no telling how long it will take AMD to develop chips according to each one's requirements.